Seattle, Washington
Written in mid-May, 2008

COULD BE

This is a secondary story. By that I mean it was told to me by a dear friend. But it contains a kind of elegant veracity that lodged so deeply in my mind that it feels like the memory of a personal experience. I can imagine it happening to me. I wish it had happened to me. And so, I tell it to you in first person as an exercise in creative non-fiction.

There is in Seattle a repository of the city’s past called the Museum of History and Industry. Seattle’s attic. A small institution, located out of the mainstream of traffic, un-flamboyant in its public presence, and more often visited by school children on field trips than tourists on vacation. It is also a standard stop on nursing home van tours. Or, as in my case, a surprise
re-discovery while out wandering around exploring the outer edges of Seattle on a spring afternoon.

A senior’s outing was underway as I arrived. Accompanied by attendants, the elderly and disabled - some in their wheelchairs - some using walkers or canes - were moving slowly up the entrance ramp ahead of me. One of their group, a skinny, spry old man still independently mobile, walked well ahead of his peers and into the museum with focused purpose.

Inside the museum, I carefully worked my way through the excursioneers and on up the stairs into a second floor gallery. One wall was covered with a photo-mural: The Pioneer Square area of downtown Seattle in 1908. Brick buildings, street cars, horse-drawn vehicles, early automobiles, and pedestrians in the attire of the time. Because of the enlargement process, the soft-edged grey-and-black-and- white image seemed more dream-like than photographic - the faded essence of a moment in time long past.

The only other person in the room was that old man I had seen going into the museum ahead of his group. He was standing close to the photo-mural, closely examining one corner of it. Sensing my presence, he turned to me, and motioned for me to join him.

“Come look,” he said.

“My mother and father lived in Pioneer Square when I was born. Next Sunday I will be one hundred years old. I was there in 1908. Look here. See the man and the woman pushing the little boy in the carriage?”

I looked. The couple were indeed there. Holding hands. Pushing a pram. And there was a baby in the carriage. A boy? Well . . . hard to tell.

“My father dressed just like that young man. I’ve seen other pictures. And my mother dressed just like that young woman. Seen the pictures. That baby there is me. Right there. One hundred years ago. What do you think?”

“Could be,” I said.

The old man bent over, and, eyes inches away, he stared hard at the image.
Standing back, he looked at the baby again, and turned to me.

“Could be - is good enough,” he said.

And smiling, he walked spryly away, back down the stairs to join his group.

“Happy birthday,” I thought. “May the possibilities be with you always.”

And then I, too, walked spryly away, down the stairs, and on out into the warm spring sunlight of a late afternoon in May 2008, repeating the mantra for the day:

“Could be - is good enough.”

May the possibilities be with me.
Always.